Cultural Education Center Proposal February 2008

The Social Justice Initiative
Contact sji@hamilton.edu


Cultural Education Center

A Cultural Education center must be established if Hamilton wants to become a truly inclusive empowering and diverse campus. This Center will accommodate all organizations representing traditionally marginalized groups. It needs to exist in addition to the Afro-Latin Cultural Center because that building houses only two groups and is too small.
Because Hamilton succeeds in providing a comfortable and ‘safe’ campus for the majority of the students, the campus effectively becomes ‘white’ space. Although all students are welcome everywhere on campus, there should be a space set aside specifically for historically marginalized students. This space becomes ‘safe’ because it allows a minority to feel in the majority. This center also offers an alternative to many other buildings at Hamilton that represent a perpetuation of ‘white’ success through their names and histories.
As this center will be open to all students, it will provide a necessary forum for white students to learn about and celebrate others. Additionally, many of the current issues of diversity ( see rationale part ) would be solved by a cultural center.

Proposal

The Social Justice Initiative proposes that Hamilton College demonstrate its commitment and respect for cultural and intellectual diversity by including plans for a Cultural Education Center in the strategic plan of 2008. The college should plan to erect a cultural center in the next ten years; it can show its commitment in the present by creating a pledging fund, hiring an architect to design a plan, and actively pursuing this goal.

The Social Justice Initiative believes that Hamilton College should lead our peer schools towards more inclusive and representative campuses by investing in a true Cultural Education Center.

What it would look like…

The Multicultural Center needs to be in a central location not only so that it is easily accessible from all parts of campus but also because it would demonstrate the central importance of diversity at Hamilton College.

Further, since this facility will be fully maintained by the college, it will emphasize Hamilton’s commitment to the experience of diverse and multicultural students.

Obviously, it must be easily accessible to every student.


First Floor—
• Foyer—comfortable space where students from various groups can intermingle, where students can sit and study, and a desk for the cultural center monitor to sit. The Foyer and the Library also provide exhibit space for students’ art and other artifacts that represent diversity and historical diversity at Hamilton.
• Library— modeled after the CJ Browsing Room, but a little bigger and better lit. This room provides space for the various groups to keep their historical documents and other resources related to multiculturalism on campus. This also offers suitable space meeting space for 15-20 people.
• Computer room— adjacent to the library or the foyer, large enough for six computers and a printer
• Lecture/ banquet room— multipurpose space the size of the science auditorium, can be converted for a lecture or for a large dinner
• Kitchen— place accessible to students, but that Bon Apetitt can also use to cater the banquet hall
Second Floor—
• Conference room— a conference room for about twenty people with walls and a door. Various groups can reserve this room for meetings and other events that require a safe, private space.
• Ten small rooms (eight ft by eight ft), one for each of the organizations. These can be used as storage spaces or as offices depending on the need of the specific organization.
• Open common room area with coaches, tables, TV. This space could be used for informal meetings and gathering or as a nice place to hang out.
• Office of the director of multicultural affairs.

Inherently different than a student union…

It is essential that this space be separate from a conventional Student Union because it serves the specific purpose of creating a forum for marginalized students to convene and communicate. This reserved space in the Cultural Center exists in addition to space in a Student Union. This demonstrates a tangible, structural commitment on the part of the college to multiculturalism and diversity on campus. Further, a separate center celebrates rather than assimilates or segregates difference. A traditional student union, even if granting meeting space to multicultural groups, is not adequate because this is still not a 'safe space' because it perpetuates the current majority/ minority dynamics. Perhaps other organizations dislike their current meeting spaces in Bristol, List, KJ, Beinecke, ELS, etc.,s but when they meet they feel comfortable and unthreatened. This is their privilege - it is not even a thought, which is why it is so important to keep in mind while planning. Many of Hamilton’s peer schools have very successful Multicultural centers and it is essential Hamilton follow this trend (such as Williams, which will be addressed in rationale).

Rationale…
Benefits of Proactively Supporting Diversity on Campus
Diversity benefits not only the multicultural population, but also the majority population of the campus. Being truly committed to diversity means to be committed to the original purpose of affirmative action for people of color which is to take proactive measures by accommodating and retaining students from multicultural groups. By instituting cultural center, colleges and universities will attract more students and faculty of color and also proactively retain the students of color that attend those institutions. Studies which are written and researched by Debra Humphreys, AAC&U, for the Ford Foundation Campus Diversity Initiative (1998) have shown how diversity benefits college campuses including:
• Many students seem to anticipate and desire greater levels of intergroup contact than they actually experience on campus. In fact, opportunities for interaction between and among student groups are desired by virtually all students. When they do occur, such interactions produce clear increases in understanding, decreases in prejudicial attitudes, and positively affect academic success. These interactions are likely to be more beneficial when they are institutionally supported, when the participants are equally valued, and when they involve projects with common goals and outcomes.
• One study found that African American alumni who had participated in theme houses reported more positive experiences than those living in predominantly white residential settings. Another study found that African American theme houses provided support and cultural enrichment to participating students.
• Another study found that cognitive development advances among students participating in a course on multiculturalism.
• Special campus services designed to support minority students, including racial and ethnic theme houses, student organizations, and academic departments positively contribute to minority student retention. (citation here? Unsure)
Many of Hamilton’s peer schools have structures in place such as Cultural Centers that make multicultural student’s college experiences more fulfilling. Schools such as Williams College have three facilities on their campus that serve multicultural students’ needs and cultural events for the whole campus. As one of the top liberal art school in the country, we strive to evolve into an even better educational institution by looking at our peer schools and seeing what makes them a competitive educational institution.


Benefits of Cultural Center to Hamilton College

A Cultural Education Center will work to solve Hamilton College’s problems:

• Firstly, such a program would implement the steps that the polled students viewed as most effective to address diversity issues. The most popular proposal among the options listed in the poll was “better peer education about diversity,” which was rated by 48.55% of students as “very effective” and called ineffective by only 15.44% (the least opposition of any plan). By providing a fixed location for diversity education outside of the context of speakers, multicultural events, or requirements to take diversity classes (all proposals favored less strongly by the student body), a cultural awareness center would meet many students' perceived needs for remedying prejudice.
• Secondly, a common concern evinced by students in the personal comments section of the poll suggested that multicultural students segregated themselves from the rest of the campus. Other data in the poll casts some doubt on this notion; while Latino and Asian students were more likely than white students to consider activities reflecting their own cultural background as “very important” in an ordered logit model, all students with such a focus on their own cultural background were also significantly more likely to report that learning about other cultures was important to them. These results make sense since white students almost always learn about their culture and by just attending an institution such as Hamilton are immersed in white culture.
• Thirdly, establishing a dedicated multicultural center could both reduce charges of self-segregation aimed at minority students and provide an opportunity for all students to learn about other cultures (which 86% of students indicated was at least “somewhat” important to them, with 39% considering it “very important.”)
Based on available survey data, Hamilton has compelling reasons to construct a multicultural center. To do so would serve students' needs and take positive steps towards reducing intolerance at the College.